Every fall Park City businesses try to predict what advanced reservations will look like for ski season. This year, hotels and nightly-rental managers are a little more reserved about sharing that information. So far, the numbers aren’t what they’re hoping for, but many are still able to see silver linings in this old silver town.
Thea Leonard, owner of Treasure Mountain Inn, candidly said she’s expecting the same kind of underwhelming season as last year for the 2009-2010 winter.
She’s seeing improvement in group business, but that’s because she has more vacancy since fewer single rooms are booking. Leonard said she looks on the bright side: she has more time which is equally valuable to money, and more so during busy years.
Leonard has also been through this before. For newer hotels making predictions about ski seasons, it’s all guesswork.
The soon-to-open St. Regis at Deer Crest said peak weeks are selling well, but it’s too soon to speak on other periods.
Christine Fowle, director of revenue management, said Christmas week, President’s Day Weekend and Sundance are likely to sell out.
She has reservations for as early as Dec. 18 and has heard from many excited clients of the Starwood hotels, the company that owns the St. Regis brand. The company has a loyalty program and frequent guests are reporting they want to give Park City and its close airport a try instead of Vail, Colo. this year.
Erin Grady, spokesperson for Deer Valley Resort, said her company’s new Lodging and Reservations entity is too new to make forecasts.
“We’ve never been on this side of the business; we don’t have a good measure going in,” she said. “I can say calls have picked up in the last couple of weeks.”
Ed Kinney, vice president of corporate affairs for Marriott Vacation Club International that manages Marriott MountainSide and Marriott Summit Watch said he can’t make predictions either.
Because of the vacation-club program, the two hotels normally operate at over 90 percent occupancy anyway. Besides saying that Sundance was booked a year in advance, Kinney wouldn’t comment on advanced reservations for ski season.
“We use different types of measurements,” he said. Guests usually book online through Marriott’s corporate website making it impossible to measure call volume.
Chris Eggleton, general manager for Newpark Hotel said many of his guests book online as well, and that’s working well for him since many travel sites have given it good ratings.
“Looking six months ahead starting in October, we’re ahead of pace this time last year,” he said.
Last October the “world was imploding” for many Americans, so direct comparisons are difficult, he said, but this year has seen good numbers of repeat guests as well as first-time visitors.